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Victor HUGO (1802-1885) The Contemplations

VICTOR HUGO: THE CONTEMPLATIONS (1856)

Theme Summary
It's the diary of a Premier book. Aurore. (29 poems - 1600 verses). This is the book
destiny. The collection is from youth. The poet recalls his school memories.
divided into two parts proposed by Horace), his first romantic emotions (Lise), his
equal to 3 pounds, the first literary struggles (Response to an unacted accusation).
first "once upon a time" and Ilchante the beauty of spring (Verenovo) and the joy of
the second dreamer in front of a beautiful landscape (the poet goes away in the
today (championships) or the outdoor show (The party at Thérèse's).
Women at Book II. The soul in bloom. (28 poems - 900 verses). This is the book
Victor Hugo of loves. Almost all the poems are inspired by
Several women have Juliette Drouet. Hugo tells about the early days of their union,
shared the life of Victor, their walks in the Bièvre forest, their joys, their
Hugo, Adèle Foucher ecstasies; shared trials experienced in common, the
(1803-1868), Juliette misunderstandings, the reconciliations. One day, he notes for her some
Drouet (1833), his son travel impressions (Letter); another day, he writes to him that he
mystical spouse and arêvéd'elle (Morning ticket).
Léonie D'Aunet Book III. The struggles and the dreams. (30 poems - 2300 verses).
(Thérèse de Blaru) T h i s i s t h e b o o k o f p i ty. I n M e l a n c h o l i a , H u g o g i ve s
a woman of letters some distressing examples of poverty in societies
married. Added to it modern. Elsewhere, he laments the fate of a poor master.
his 2 daughters, Léopoldine studies, withers the persecutions inflicted on men of
(1824-1843), the eldest Well, denounce the war and tyranny as scourges.
very attached to her/him source, the statue) or the death penalty as a scandal(L
Father and Adèle (1831) a nature); it rises to philosophical views, explains the
the one who got away bad as a test (Explanation), describe the punishment of
will marry a writer, cursed (Saturn) and glorious are those whose genius deciphers
very attached to her the universal riddle (Magnitudo Parvi).
mother. If Noble lady Book IV Paucameae (A few verses for my daughter). (17
can qualify Léonie, poems-800vers). It is the book of mourning. Hugo reflects on the
other names coup that struck him. Sometimes he will revolt against the cruelty of the
are less explicit. destination (three years later), sometimes he gets emotional remembering the
The death of passed(sheavait priscepI)sometimes he submits to the will
Léopoldine divine(A Ville qie r) From now on, he associates with the thought of the
On September 4, 1843, death a hope of beyond (Death).
Leopoldine Senoie Book V In motion. (26 poems - 1700 verses). This is the book of
with her husband in the regained energy. The expatriate poet tears himself away from his
boating on sadness seeks to find new reasons to live in the
the Seine in Villequier. meditation. To a political poem (Written in 1846), to some
Victor Hugo did impressions of the promenade (Pasteur and herds) and even
He learns what 9 is. a childhood memory (At the Feuillantines) is mixed with
is in Spain with more general poems about nature and the condition
Juliette. He will not become human (Mooing of the cattle, Words on the dune)
sourcegravethat3 Book VI. At the edge of infinity. (26 poems - 2800 verses). It is the
Itissetin1946.Bookofuncertainties.Itispopulatedbyspecters,angels,
Since these four of spirits that bring to the poet the awaited revelations.
poor hearts The messages received are sometimes contradictory: some
torch, I am not poems of anxiety (Horror, Tears in the night) are close
not gone to pray on his with poems of hope (Spes, Cadaver); but
tomb Hope ends by carrying away. The book opened with two
The last poem poems that show a path to follow (The Bridge, Ibo); it
the contemplations ends with reassuring prophecies from the Mouth
To the one who remained of shadow, who, at the end of the journey, announces the final failure of the
in France, last criminal powers and the advent of universal pardon
poem of
Contemplations
summarize the whole of
the work. "I walked
in the middle of
tombs
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The excerpts below come almost entirely from books III and
VI (that is, they illustrate 'V.Hugo philosopher and poet')

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Horror

Mysterious spirit who, with your finger on your mouth,

Passes... don't go away! talk to the fierce man

Drunk on shadow and immensity,

Talk to me, you, white forehead who leans into my night!

Answer me, you who shine and walk under the branches

Like a breath of clarity!

Is it you that sometimes brings midnight to my place?

Was it you who knocked on my door the other night,

While I was not sleeping?

Is it therefore towards me that your light slowly comes?

The stone of my threshold may be the first

From the dark steps of death.

Perhaps at my door opening onto the immense shadow,

The invisible staircase of darkness begins;

Perhaps, oh pale escapees,

When you rise from the depths of sepulchral horror,

O death, when you emerge from the cold spiral,

Is it at my place that you are knocking!

For the house of exile, mixed with the catacombs,

It is leaning against the wall of the city of the tombs.

The outlaw is the one who goes out;

It floats submerged like the ship that sinks.

Hebarelyseesitandsays:Whatisthisshadow?

And the night said:Who is this dead one?

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Welcome, shadow! O my sister! O figure

Who signals me as the obscure riddle

I think, sinister and alone;

And who comes, frightening me with your sublime glow,

Wipe the sweat of the abyss from my forehead

With a piece of your shroud!...

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Clearance

The ocean sparkles under its vast cloud.

The wave, exhausted from its endless battle,

He fell asleep, and, letting the obstacle rest,

Make the whole bank a huge kiss.

It seems that everywhere, at the same time, life

Dissolved, mourning, winter, night, envy,

And that the lying dead says to the standing living:

Love! And that a dark soul, blossomed in everything,

Slowly moves his mouth towards our lips.

Being, extinguishing in the shadow and ecstasy its fevers,

Opening its sides, its loins, its eyes, its scattered hearts,

In its deep pores receives from all sides

The penetration of the sacred sap.

The great peace from above comes like a tide.

The blade of grass quivers in the cracks of the pavement;

Thesouliswarm.Youcanfeelthatthenestisbeingincubated.

The infinite seems full of a thrill of foliage.

We believe we are at this hour when the awakened earth

Understand the sound that the opening of the day makes,

The first step of the wind, of work, of love,

Of man, and the lock of the sound door,

So the neighing of the white horse of dawn.

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The sparrow with a flap of its wing, just like a wild spirit,

Come tease the monstrous flow that smiles;

The air plays with the fly and the foam with the eagle;

The serious plowman makes his furrows and regulates

The page where the poem of the wheat will be written;

Fishermen are over there seated under a vine;

The horizon seems a dazzling dream where swims

The scale of the sea, the feather of the cloud,

For the Ocean is a hydra and the cloud a bird.

A glimmer, a vague ray, starts from the cradle

A woman balances at the threshold of a cottage,

Golden fields, flowers, the wave, and becomes light

By touching a tomb that sleeps near the bell tower.

Thedaydivesintothedarkestpartoftheabyss,andgoesseeking

The shadow, and the kiss on the forehead under the dark and haggard water.

Everything is gentle, calm, happy, peaceful; God observes.

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Death

I saw this reaper. It was in its field.

She walked with big strides, harvesting and mowing,

Black skeleton letting the twilight through.

In the shadow where it seems that everything trembles and recoils,

The man was following the glimmers of the fowl with his eyes.

The triumphant ones under the triumphal arches

They fell; she transformed Babylon into a desert,

The throne on the scaffold and the scaffold on the throne,

The roses in manure, the children in birds,

Gold in ashes, and the eyes of mothers in streams.

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And the women cried: - Give us back that little being.

To make him die, why make him be born?

It was just a sobbing on the ground, up, down;

Bony-fingered hands emerged from the black rags;

A cold wind rustled through the countless shrouds;

The distressed peoples seemed under the dark scythe

A shivering herd that flees into the shadows;

Everything was beneath his feet: mourning, terror, and night.

Behind her, the forehead bathed in gentle flames,

A smiling angel carried the bouquet of souls.

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Melancholia

Where do all these children go, none of whom is laughing?

These sweet thoughtful beings, which fever thins?

Those eight-year-old girls we see walking alone?

They go to work fifteen hours under mills

They will, from dawn until dusk, do eternally.

In the same prison the same movement.

Crouched under the teeth of a dark machine,

Hideous monster that chews we know not what in the shadows,

Innocents in a prison, angels in a hell,

They are working. Everything is made of bronze, everything is made of iron.

We never stop and we never play.

Also, what a pallor! The ash is on their cheek.

It is barely day, they are already quite tired.

They understand nothing of their destiny, alas!

They seem to say to God: - Small as we are,

Look what men are doing to us!

Oh, infamous servitude imposed on the child!

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Rachitism! Work with the suffocating breath

Undo what God has done; who kills, senseless deed,

Beauty on the foreheads, in the hearts the thought,

And who would do it - that is certainly its fruit!

D'Apollo a hunchback, from Voltaire a fool!

Bad work that takes the tender age in its grip,

Who produces wealth by creating misery,

Who uses a child as if it were a tool!

Progress that is being asked: Where is it going? What does it want?

Who breaks the youth in bloom! who gives, in sum,

A soul to the machine and takes it away from man!

May this work, hated by mothers, be cursed!

Cursedliketheviceinwhichonedebasesoneself,

Cursed like disgrace and like blasphemy!

O God! Let him be cursed in the name of work itself,

In the name of true work, healthy, fruitful, generous,

Who makes the free people and who makes man happy!

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I came, I saw, I lived

I have lived well enough, since in my pains

I walk, without finding arms that help me,

Since I barely laugh at the children around me,

Since I am no longer delighted by flowers;

Since in spring, when God celebrates nature,

I attend, spirit without joy, to this splendid love;

Since I am at the hour when man flees the day,

Alas! is the secret sadness of everything;

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Since the serene hope in my soul is defeated;

Since in this season of fragrances and roses,

Oh my daughter! I long for the shade where you rest,

Since my heart is dead, I have lived enough.

I did not refuse my task on earth.

My furrow? Here it is. My sheaf? Here it is.

I have lived smiling, always more softened,

Standing, but inclined towards mystery.

I did what I could; I served, I kept watch,

And I often saw that they laughed at my pain.

I was surprised to be an object of hatred,

Having suffered a lot and worked a lot.

In this earthly prison where no wing opens,

Without complaining, bleeding, and falling on the hands,

Mournful, exhausted, mocked by the human convicts,

I wore my link from the eternal chain.

Now, my gaze only opens halfway;

I no longer turn even when I am named;

I am filled with astonishment and boredom, like a man

Who gets up before dawn and who hasn't slept.

Gene no longer even dares, in my lazy gloom,

Respond to the envious one whose mouth harms me.

Oh Lord, open the doors of the night for me,

So that I leave and disappear!

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And the lowing of cattle

Bellowing of the oxen, in the time of gentle Virgil,

Like today, in the evening, when the nimble night slips away,

Oh,inthemorning,whenthedawnovertheecstaticfields

Pour forth the dew and the day, you said:

Ripen, moving wheat! Fields, fill yourselves with grasses!

That the earth, waving its plume of sprays,

Sing in the golden wave of a rich harvest!

Live, beast; live, pebble; live, man; live, bush!

At the time when the sun sets, when the grass is full

Of great black ghosts of the trees of the plain

up to the distant sloping and growing hills,

When the brown plowman of the hills descends

And returns to its roof from which smoke rises,

Let the thirst to see his beloved wife

The child whom he warmed in his arms yesterday,

Thatdesire,growingwitheachstephetakes,

Imitate in your heart the lengthening of the shadow!

Beings! Things! Live! Without fear, without mourning, without number!

May everything blossom in crimson smiles!

May man have rest and the ox sleep!

Live! Grow! Sow the seed on the adventure!

Let us feel a shiver throughout nature,

Under the leaf of the nests, at the white threshold of the houses,

In the dark trembling of the deep horizons,

A vast rush of love, in the green grass,

In the den, in the pond, in the open glade,

To love endlessly, to love always, to love again,

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Under the serenity of the dark golden stars!

Make the air tremble, the flow, the wing, the mouth,

Oh, palpitations of wild great love!

Let us feel the kiss of the unlimited being!

And peace, virtue, happiness, hope, kindness,

O divine fruits, fall from the eternal branches!

Thus you spoke, voice, great solemn voices;

And Virgil listened as I listen, and the water

Saw the august swan passing by, and the birch

Levant,andtherockthefoam,andthedarksky

The man... - O nature! abyss! immensity of shadow!